After reading (and rereading and rereading) The Republic, the one work that is credited as truly being Plato's own (with the exception of Book I maybe) I'm going with E as well. Plato was no I. The Myth of Blood & Metals as well as the repeated reliance on existing political structure as evidence screams E to me. Even the opening passages with the festival and the get together at Cephalus' house are indicative of E behavior, rather than I. Plato was way more of social butterfly than either Socrates or Aristotle, his INT mentor and pupil, respectively.

yeah, plato is as infj as it gets. after learning a bit more, he's too interested in spirit/the soul. and ideas are important based more on how they transform the individuals who take them on as beliefs than on what they can tangibly accomplish. how to be with the higher self in the best possible way.

^ The above post seems to me a sufficiently strong analysis of Plato's personal metaphysics and I can contrast that with my system as a thinker being radically different as rather than focusing on finding our higher divine identity I seek to achieve infinite mastery of creation in order to control it and impose our will upon the world in a way that maximizes the power of our life force as well as being a means of achievement.

i still don't think i can read what i want to mean from what i've said.

infjs focus of the goodness of the meanings that bind everything together. intjs focus on how the meanings can do specific things (by constraining what is possible more precisely). the difference between a holistic alchemist and an actual chemist. a willingness to venture even further into the unseen in order to do a broader, less refined diagnosis (a more values expansive, socially expansive one). i see plato's project as an attempt to re-balance the good, the true, and the beautiful. he gets torn to shreds in scholarship because of his essentialism and his belief in an ultimate truth. i don't think the platonic realism reading is particularly compelling. i think the neo-platonist reading seems more interesting as a way of being rather than doing, a way of understanding the recursive hierarchy of all things. it is simply an analysis of the world from the perspective of meaning, or from a communication systems perspective. the value of his project, i think, is in trying to invest one's self-expansion, one's identifications, in ways of life that feel ecologically valid, that inspire one to reach out all the way to higher and higher selfhoods. the meanings constrain how we can be together, how we can communicate, how we can live in community and recognize opportunities for beneficial communitas/shared transformational periods. this kind of responsibility and urging seems like the foundation of plato's work to me. creating conditions in terms of our knowledge/discourse/truth that inspire us to be the best we can be individually as we go down our respective paths (driven by the dialectics of life).

admittedly, this is kind of my own perspective because i've only read a bit for some rhetoric classes a ways back. i'd be more interesting in reading plotinus work "the enneads." which kind of seem to have many of the same insights of enneagrammatic theory and relate to a lot of the spiritual insights we discuss and try to codify in typology.

"Stereotypes about personality and gender turn out to be fairly accurate: ... On the binary Myers-Briggs measure, the thinking-feeling breakdown is about 30/70 for women versus 60/40 for men." ~ Bryan Caplan

Bringing Plotinus and his Neoplatonism into this discussion was a very interesting move. Personally I prefer Hermes and his Hermeticism as I do call myself a wizard after all but Neoplatonism perhaps has a certain spiritual element and a connection with what we might call the Universal Source or the Perfect One the other systems lack as they emphasize a holistic harmony with all that is. Hermeticism seems to be more rationalistic as it explains the mechanisms moving this system of the world on which it works into causation from a scientific standpoint as well as from the view of philosophical cosmology. I thereby equate both systems with Ni dominants since they both deal with the esoteric elements of existence though Neoplatonism seems more for INFJs and Hermeticism seems more for INTJs. Therefore I believe Plato and Plotinus were INFJs and Hermes was INTJ.

Well I can't really provice any "new" info on this i you get my drift but I'd rather like to know your considerations on the matter...

my guess would be INTJ 1w9 So/Sp

ENFP: We put the Fi in Fire
ENFP
5w4>1w9>2w1 Sx/Sp
SEE-Fi
Papa Bear
Motivation: Dark Worker
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Chibi Seme
MTG Color: black/red
Male Archtype: King/LoverSunburst! "You are a gay version of Gambit" Speed Gavroche"I wish that I could be affected by any hate, but I can't, cuz I just get affected by the bank" Chamillionaire